Islanders' Kyle Palmieri is skating, but return to team is unknown

Kyle Palmieri has yet to skate with his teammates because of an undisclosed injury suffered during pre-training camp workouts. And the Islanders have not indicated whether the projected top-six right wing will be available when the regular season starts.

“The good news is, right now, is he’s skating every day [on his own] and he’s progressing,” coach Lane Lambert said on Saturday. “His conditioning is great. It’s no different than any other time we have any injury. It’s next man up. This has given us a good opportunity to see a couple of guys in that type of role. At the same time, he’s a big piece to our team and we look forward to getting him back.”

Palmieri, 32, had 16 goals and 17 assists in 55 games last season but went through a stretch where he missed 27 of 28 games because of an upper-body injury.

That was during the season, though. Missing all or a significant portion of training camp often puts a player at a disadvantage. Lambert said Palmieri has been attending all of the team meetings.

“It’s not easy if you miss training camp or a good portion of training camp,” Lambert said. “But he’s been skating so we don’t expect that transition period to be very difficult at all.”

No big changes

Lambert said Friday’s weather-related postponement of the game against the Rangers didn’t alter any of the Islanders’ practice or lineup plans since the team does not play again until Monday and hadn’t played Thursday night like the Rangers.

“It was interesting, for sure,” Brock Nelson said. “It was crazy, the weather. I went home and we had a little bit of water damage so I was taking care of that. It’s one of those things you just have to take it and roll with it and move on.”

By Andrew Gross

andrew.gross@newsday.comAGrossNewsday

Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.